A biography provided by the John Templeton Foundation and published by PBS online states this book "has been credited with literally creating the contemporary field of science and religion.

Barbour provides introductions to several schools of philosophy in order to give the reader knowledge enough to understand how relations between science and religion look from these distinct viewpoints.

The scientific discoveries made by Galileo and Newton began to describe and explain the natural and physical laws by which the earth operates.

Liberal theologians accepted the theory of evolution, and held the opinion that God works continuously through the evolutionary process.

Where in science, all events that are observed must be repeatable and produce the same results in order to uphold natural laws.

This chapter asserts that although there are many similarities in the methods and language of science and religion, the two subjects remain distinctly different in their purposes.

[4] The first chapter in this section examines contemporary physics, in particular indeterminacy as shown in the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Barbour concludes this chapter by stating that although physics can be used to explain human freedom to some extent, it will never produce an entirely satisfactory argument for it.

The next chapter addresses how the idea that man is simply a machine that can be broken up into respective systems and thus is completely predictable, is not satisfactory in the scientific world.

The liberal side of theology embraces the theory of evolution, and incorporates it with scripture into a doctrine of continuing creation.